My dad was in manufacturing. He always told the car companies to fuck off because of this. If you start doing business with a car company, the bullying starts right away. You eventually are forced to choose between them and your other customers. It’s probably best to just never start down that road if you can avoid it.
My company refuses to work with automotive primarily because of the billing. They require you to front the money for all R&D, and tooling, and then they literally pay whenever they want for actual delivery (they completely ignore invoice terms such as Net 30 days - and will pay at 60, 90, or 111.8843 days)
They’re not the only ones to do that, but yeah, they have a rep. I’ve heard of FIAT (now Stellantis) routinely paying suppliers 3 to 6 months after a contract is fulfilled. Absolutely ludicrous.
It's actually worse for us since we are capitol equipment suppliers. It could literally be 3-4 years before we get paid since they won't pay until the equipment has a proven production rate/quality/other random metric. They will find just about any excuse to not sign off the IQ/OQ/PQ and if there are any delays in other equipment, or materials, or whatever then they don't pay.
This sounds a lot like how big distribution chains work around here... Maybe it's a thing with economies-of-scale-based businesses. Like 'we'll be moving MILLIONS of your gadget but you'll have to sell your and your employees' and providers' souls. And self-respect.
If they know they can get away with their suppliers having to front all the cash, why not do it? If all their competitiors get away with it, they'd be fools not to as that is a lot of expense and interest they're eating and they'll need to make up for that somewhere.
Yes. And still not everyone wants to work for them. I'd sure never ever ever try to sell them anything... I'm thinking with such reputations they get shafted out of good opportunities and this has a cost. I'm not sure how Costco treats their partners & providers but I'd guess they're still shrewd without bullying and sell better quality. I know the business model is different but clearly there's room and money to win in other ways.
